Re: non-ASCII environment
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 09:14, Jerome BENOIT <jgmb65@rezozer.net> wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> I am writing some C code which involves ASCII characters:
> in C related books, we can find a lot of comments about
> ASCII character issues, as far as we are concern with portability.
>
> Nevertheless, something bothers me: where non-ASCII environment can be found
> ?
>
> Furthermore, can such an environment be created on a Debian box ?
> The aim is to check the portability of my code.
Well, Unicode, specifically the UTF-8 encoding, is generally the standard for
modern Linux systems. Of course, as long as you are using only characters
that are in ASCII, UTF-8 is compatible... There is also GB 18030, China's
Unicode encoding, but again, it is ASCII compatible.
The Win32, .NET and Java platforms all use UTF-16/USC-2 (it's complicated)
natively, which is not ASCII and is not ASCII compatible.
Joel's Unicode article is from 2003, but still very useful:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
Some good essays from Tim Bray:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/06/Unicode
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/13/Strings
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/26/UTF
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/30/JavaStrings
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
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